You may think you need to spend thousands of dollars on cameras and gear to take high-quality pictures, but that’s far from true. Here are 4 things you can change to take pictures like a professional.

1) Angles

You shouldn’t rush when taking pictures. Before taking the shot, use your own eyes to decide what’s the best position to take the picture you want.

If you are taking a picture of an object, it’s usually best to be at the same level. But you can move around and see what different positions do. You may be surprised by how cool photos from unconventional positions can be. Play with your angles, study the picture and then press the shutter.

2) Lighting

You don’t need professional lighting to take well-lit photos. You can use daylight for clear photos, or you can use artificial lights and play with shadows.

But what if you don’t have good light to take the picture you want? Well, you can always be patient and take the photo at another time. The best time to take pictures with natural light is the golden hour. If you want your pictures to look like it’s nighttime, remember you can always modify them with post-processing.

It might shock you at first, but leaving objects from the foreground while focusing on something in the background creates wonderful effects. Trees, windows, columns, use whatever you can to create a framing for the background subject. This will give a whole new depth to your pictures.

Plus, framing can usually add to the story behind the picture. Without losing focus on the main subject, you can place objects to the sides and add some context.

Let’s say you visit Machu Picchu. Thousands of photographers have already visited it and many of them have taken amazing pictures, so what’s the point of even taking your camera?

Well, photography is about interpreting a moment and sharing it. Instead of taking the same photo as everyone else, you should take some time, appreciate the view, and then take some pictures that capture the essence of the place from your perspective. Use your camera as a painter uses its canvas.

Taking long exposure photographies is a stunning way how to capture a world where the power of light creates surreal creations hidden for your own eyes and also a cool way how to add motion to your picture, using the natural power of wind or water stream. You can find here some cool tips and tricks how to take long exposure photographies.

Equipment

There is only one crucial thing you will need to take long exposed pictures – TRIPOD. If I can give you a good advice, do not spend money for a plastic one. You need to be sure of the maximal stability of the tripod. Additionaly I suppose you own a camera with a manual exposure settings if you read this as well.

Basics

As you have probably realized the long exposure photograph will be taken during a longer time and sometimes with a larger aperture (f-number) as well. Where to use the long exposure? Basically you can use it in situations when you have less light in your scene or and here comes the trick part when there is something in the scene that is moving (e.g. on the background and you want to capture the movement of the object on the background).

Usage examples

Water streams. The stream of water is an ideal object to test your time settings skills. A common rule says that the longer you expose the stream of water the smoother the photographed surface of the water is. There are no visible single drops. If you take your time and practice enough your long exposed photographs of water can be STUNNING!You can watch here some examples

Night Traffic. Traffic in the night is another great object for the long exposure photography. The moving lights of cars create the same effect as the water stream from the example above. If you photograph the same speed traffic you will be able to see rails of light red and white of the rear and front lights. If you take a picture of a slowing down or speeding up traffic the density of the lights will change. The lines of light are going to be thinner in places where the car speeds up.Again watch some examples here

Night sky. As you know the night sky is a moving object as well (thanks to the Earth’s rotation] and it has its own light – stars. So it means you can take a cool photographs of the night sky as well. The main trick here is a superlong exposure in minutes or tens of minutes as the light from the stars is weak.

Do you need a tip how to start to create these great trick photographies? Simply take your tripod, camera go to the nearest stream (water, traffic, people whatever). Install the camera on the tripod and just play with the time and stops you will soon realize how it works. I really recommend to start with the water stream photography.

Remember on golden rule: The composition is the king. Never underestimate it. A cool water stream trick can be half-destroyed when composition of the picture is poor!